Music Therapy for Well-being in the Growing Years

For a child, "well-being" is not just about feeling happy, but about feeling safe, loved, and secure, and having supportive relationships that help them understand and regulate their emotions. Child well-being includes positive relations with caregivers and peers, a growing sense of self-worth, physical and emotional energy for play, learning, and exploration. It reflects an overall balance in the child's life, where distress is expected, but the child feels supported and capable of coping. A strong sense of well-being helps children develop confidence, resilience, and optimism, enabling healthy learning and developmental progress. Music therapy is an integrative technique in healthcare that uses evidence-based musical interventions to achieve therapeutic, non-musical goals like overall well-being. This narrative reviews the existing literature on the effects of music therapy on children's physical, emotional, and psychological well-being.